


Mixtape

by SleepsWithCoyotes



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Body Horror, Gen, Possession, Pre-Series, episode 33
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-26
Updated: 2017-03-26
Packaged: 2018-10-10 23:17:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,902
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10449780
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SleepsWithCoyotes/pseuds/SleepsWithCoyotes
Summary: The temptations and perils of the flesh.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Archiving old fic from 2013 - I actually haven't listened since ep 33, from the looks of things, so everything I post will likely be terribly non-canon-compliant. No comment spoilers, please--I do intend to get caught up!

The first thing he does when he gets up from the floor is look at himself in the mirror. He isn't much to look at, neither tall nor short, thin nor fat, but the novelty of being able to look, to look without looking _back_ , pays for much. He'll grow. Probably. Grinning into the mirror, teeth spectacularly sharp, he murmurs, "Hello, Night Vale." His body's voice, _his_ voice, has gone cavernous, edged with a rumbling growl.

The second thing he does is go into the kitchen to make himself a sandwich. Taste, smell, the satisfying heft of raw sustenance in his hands: he's nearly forgotten them all.

It's a good sandwich. Far better than what he's been surviving on.

Deep inside him, a tiny, useless spark flickers, writhes, and goes dim. He doesn't miss it.

***

The Peters stop him on the sidewalk outside the station. Mrs. Peters has her hands wrapped around her husband's arm as if he's the only thing keeping her on her feet. They both look sad.

"We're so sorry for your loss," John says.

He puts on a solemn face, careful not to show the tips of his teeth. "Thank you," he says, faking the cracked tone of a boy whose voice is breaking. "Leonard was a great mentor."

They both look at him strangely. He works it out later, reminds himself that the hierarchy of death is not 'last out, first mentioned.' He has to remind himself often.

***

Station Management won't let him just take over the show. He's too young, his voice too obvious in this body. When he realizes he has _years_ to kill, he--

\--has his first brush with reeducation. _Grief,_ people whisper when they think he can't hear them. _First his family, then poor Leonard._

He doesn't really remember the family that came with his body. He does remember patience. Years are nothing, and the flesh offers plenty of distractions.

He can wait.

***

That first year he gets into fights a lot, mainly for the pleasure of feeling things change. There's a local boy who's an excellent foil, always muttering about cover-ups and things City Council doesn't want them to know. The rest of the town thinks that's why they brawl like savages, but he just likes the blossoming of bruises, split knuckles and the horrifying wiggle to a tooth he'd thought anchored like bedrock. He tongues at it until it heals, tastes blood and walks around hungry for days.

He grows his hair long that year because it's fascinating. All those dead cells, with more dying all the time, so many they push each other out and away in endless ropes. He does trim his nails; they grow so fast he's afraid they'll start to look like other things if he lets them go too long.

He wakes one night with a delicious ache between his legs. Half-formed, half-awake memories urge him to reach down, press and then grasp, and _oh_ , how had he ever forgotten _this?_

Because it's the last pizza parlor in town, he finds excuses to get to Big Rico's once a week. He takes long showers, sleeps in. He _wallows_ in his sheer humanity.

The first year passes before he knows it.

***

He wakes one day from a dream about his mother--the mother the rest of the town ascribes to him, at any rate. _Beware,_ she'd hissed at him, her eyes flat and terrible. _Be warned. Be wary._ It makes something flutter in the pit of his stomach, but he brushes it off.

She used to say that to everything.

***

"Boys," the school counselor says seriously, "you're eighteen. You're far too old to be getting into fistfights. Don't you think it's about time you settled your differences like men? We have a dueling court for a reason."

He stares at his hands instead of at Mr. Thistlewaite. His knuckles are split again, and he likes the look of them, though they've started to puzzle him. There's different kinds of scarring, he knows, different kinds of healing. Granulation is the only term he remembers, because it reminds him of sand, but the names aren't important. It's so strange to think his body is making new flesh, new skin, _re_ making itself as he watches. He wonders sometimes if scarring isn't just another way of growing, only with as much new meat as he's put into his hands in the last three years, they ought to be three times their size. They are large hands, to be sure. He's not certain how much of that is him and how much is--

"Cecil? Are you listening? _Cecil._ "

He looks up belatedly. Steve Carlsberg sneers on his right. The rest of the town says he's growing up wild, forgetting the respect his mother taught him, but he's still not used to answering to that name.

***

College is...interesting. He takes journalism classes, learns to give up sleep. People want to be his friend, his boyfriend, but he has to be careful. Not so much with his voice these days; he's growing into it, and though he still has a tendency to growl a little into his consonants, it's a softer sound. Sexy, many people assure him. It's his teeth he has to be careful of, his kisses more so, only people behave...unpredictably when he tells them he doesn't do that.

"You--what?" Earl says tightly, pushing him back at arm's length. Earl is still leaning against his closed dorm room door, but now he looks like one of them is standing on the wrong side of it. "I thought you...."

He frowns. "You thought I what?"

It...hurts that Earl won't look at him after that, won't talk to him except in terse, reluctant phrases. He's not sure why he feels anything at all, but it's been a long time since he's had a body. Maybe he's just forgotten.

He dreams of his mother more often after that-- _Be wary, beware, be **warned**_ \--but he's not certain what she's trying to tell him. He's not sure how she got this number in the first place.

***

It isn't that he avoids mirrors, not any more than anyone would avoid the prison of decades, maybe centuries. He just doesn't think about them. He keeps his hair cut short, has never had much of a beard to speak of, stares meditatively into the drain as he brushes his teeth. It's as he rinses, spits, and runs his tongue over his canines that he notices something...different.

He looks up reluctantly, but there's only his own eyes staring back. His eyes, his face, his--

Leaning forward with a jerk, he stretches his lips wider, drops open his jaw. Shaking fingers come up to probe and press, and as enamored as he is of his ever-changing body, _this_ change scares him.

His teeth, his lovely sharp teeth, have grown rounder, blunted; when, he can't say. It shouldn't horrify him, but _does._ He tries to tell himself it'll help him blend in, reminds himself that he's fascinated by the way his body is constantly reinventing itself, but it's not the same. This isn't something he chose.

For the first time he's truly aware of just how alone he is, the weight of it bowing his shoulders and sitting like a rock on the back of his neck. There's no one he can ask, no one to tell him whether this is normal or reason for concern, though he knows there are others like him.

He's on his own.

_Be wary._

In a body that no longer feels quite as predictable.

_Beware._

No longer quite as safe.

_Be warned._

He calls it a sabbatical, but he knows what it is.

He runs.

***

He could go back to Night Vale--back home, he thinks in unguarded moments, but what does that even _mean?_ \--but instead he flees the country. He doesn't really remember the airport or the flight, just blinking back to himself on a hard bench in a mostly-empty bus terminal. The arrival and departure times seem to be running both backward and forward depending on the destination, which should be a welcome touch of familiarity, except that the destinations read 'Franchia,' 'Luftknarp.' When did he arrive in Europe?

"Hi," says the woman sitting across from him. She has the vaguely desperate look of an American in possession of a phrasebook she prays she'll never be called upon to use. "Are you waiting for the bus?" She seems to realize this is a spectacularly stupid question; flushing, she soldiers on in a rush. "I mean, where are you headed? I'm on my way to Belgior--you know, land of giants and dragons? And traffic! How about you?"

"Svitz," he says without thinking. He knows suddenly that there's a bus ticket in his pocket, though he doesn't recall paying for it. There's also a well-stocked backpack tucked between his feet packed with clothes, maps, a few phrasebooks of his own. For all that he's been lost in a haze, he's clearly done his homework.

The woman looks disappointed. "Oh," she says, "that's too bad. I was hoping I'd know somebody on the bus. What's your name?"

He opens his mouth, and just like always, the name he wants is never there--but neither is _his,_ the one he's used for longer than his body has been alive. "Uh, Cecil," he manages after a moment. "Sorry. Mind went blank."

She smiles, patient and kind. "Don't you just hate that?"

***

The ride into Svitz is long. The ride into Svitz is dark. The ride into Svitz is...almost completely unmemorable, as in he can't remember a thing, just the jouncing of the bus over potholed roads, looking out the windows at vague, spindly shadows that might have been trees, and feeling like the trip would never end. He doesn't remember getting off the bus or what possessed him to get off where he did. It's the middle of the night, and he's miles from anywhere, sitting on an overgrown bench by the side of the road. There are no signs, no way of telling when the next bus will stop. He has no real reason to think another bus will _ever_ stop except that he's here. For what it's worth.

Someone sits down on the bench beside him, but that's...that's fine. At least he isn't alone. He still doesn't turn his head to look. Whoever they are, they're about his height, about his weight, vaguely familiar from the corner of his eye. Maybe he knows them. He must, if they're traveling together.

"Are we in Svitz?" he asks, looking up at a full moon peering through breaks in the clouds. His companion doesn't answer, so he digs around in his backpack until he finds a guidebook on backpacking through Europe.

The rolling hills, the off-key tones on the breeze...this _must_ be Svitz. He just doesn't know where in Svitz, or really what he's doing here.

Eventually he gets up. His traveling companion follows suit. He can see a plywood shack on a steep hillside not far from the overgrown bench, and he heads that way for lack of better options. Maybe someone will be there who can point them toward a town, a hamlet, a collection of two shacks on a less-steep hillside. He isn't picky.

When they reach the top of the hill, they have an excellent view of the ravine on the other side, at its bottom a river of vibrantly blue flowers woven through a wall of thorns right out of a fairy tale. The shack is empty, covered in dust. There are two beds and a crooked sign over the door that says 'Hostel.'

He's so _tired._

The hostel is built on an incline. That must be why his companion keeps rolling into him--but aren't there two beds?--why he keeps slipping, falling out of bed and getting tangled up, until he doesn't know where he ends and _he_ begins until everything pulls up short with a lurch.

They pull themselves out of the thorns at the bottom of the ravine, trudge aching and bleeding up the steep hill to the plywood shack once more. His strained giggles won't stop.

He lies back down, wedges his pillow under his hip and rests his head on the curve of his arm. He can't possibly fall out of bed a second time, but right on the edge of sleep he finds himself falling again, tumbling and tangling. It happens again and again. Soon he's afraid to sleep. Soon he stops sleeping entirely. The sun never rises.

And then the moon goes black.

***

"Svitz?" echoes the owner of the café he wakes up outside, who shooed him in half an hour ago saying people dying of starvation on his doorstep are bad for business. "Can't say I've ever heard of it. I mean--you're American, right?"

He's honestly not sure what that has to do with anything, but his erstwhile rescuer seems certain.

"I mean, if someone was joking with you and you're trying to...you know, with the pronunciation? Because no offense, but we get a lot of tourists through here, and, uh...you don't have to try so hard. English is pretty common as a second language--not to discourage you or anything."

He should be more surprised--how can one not have heard of an entire country?--but mostly he's exhausted. He feels like he spent years in that midnight land, losing his feet and his bearings and occasionally himself. That last tumble had been the worst; he must have hit his head, because all he remembers is a sharp, teeth-rattling shock and a flare of pain like something trying to crack open his skull and rip apart the lobes of his brain like a ripe fruit. He's missing time, he thinks, but he can't work out how much and doesn't want to stay to find out. He's still too close to Svitz, and he doesn't know where his traveling companion went, whether they made it out with him or whether they're waiting for him. Watching him. He already has directions to the next bus station, intends to be gone by nightfall.

"Oh, by the way--what's your name?"

He stares. "What?" He's already lost the thread of the question.

The owner laughs. "Sorry, I should let you eat. Don't worry about paying; just stop by again if you're in the area. Hopefully when you're feeling a bit better!"

"I will," he promises, though he doesn't even know where he is. Not Svitz; it's the only thing he knows.

He is never coming back here. Never.

***

Franchia, land of arches, is exactly what he needs. There are no people, no _buildings,_ and thus no mirrors; no reason for him to wonder whether he's blending in or perhaps blending in a bit too well, to wonder what he'll see staring back if he forgets himself and looks.

When he runs his tongue across their points, his teeth feel even blunter now than they did before. They're almost completely human, and while he doesn't know what to make of it, he knows exactly what to think of it.

_Be wary, be wary, be wary._

He takes long walks through the corridors of Franchia's ancient arches--tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of arches, a _proliferation_ of arches, lining up to form long hallways that sometimes branch or lead to dead ends, occasionally to stone fields where dozens lie shattered and crumbled as if crushed under a giant foot. Though the arches cluster closely together, the fit isn't perfect; there's always enough sunshine trickling down from above to light the halls of the maze, leaving him to stroll through comfortable shade instead of groping his way in pitch darkness.

He has extra food with him this time, and also a couple of bottles of cheap wine. Maybe if he'd knocked himself out earlier during his stay in Svitz, he could have escaped that much quicker. Franchia doesn't seem to be that kind of country, so he drinks the wine in the evenings as he curls up under a blanket, staring up at the stars. It distracts him from the fact that he's still losing time.

It's nothing violent or obtrusive. It's just that sometimes when he sleeps, he doesn't wake until noon, up and dressed and strolling along under the arches, humming under his breath. He always falls silent after that; he's not much of a hummer. His voice is a tool, a weapon, not a musical instrument.

He doesn't think about it, though. He won't. And eventually he'll get a handle on himself, and when he goes back-- _goes home_ \--no one will even notice the difference. They never do.

He tries staying awake. He tries laying traps for himself just before he sleeps: cobbled-together trip lines and things that rattle when he moves, designed to jolt him back to himself. Nothing works. He finishes the last of the wine, but he still feels hazy in the evenings, still huddled in his blanket, staring up at the cold, faint pinpricks in the void.

He's running low on food, about ready to give up on the notion of making sense of himself and actively _search_ for others of his kind when he gets the feeling he's not alone. That there is something in the maze with him--a beast, unseen for now but drawing closer--and it is, of course, hungry.

He has a compass--a gift from Earl--but he hasn't been marking his path. He'd trusted to conventional wisdom when it came to dealing with mazes: always turn in the same direction, watch out for pit traps, and if someone tells you not to take a straight path, ask them why before making up your mind. None of this helps now that he's in a hurry, the growing certainty that he can't afford to be wrong too often quickening his steps.

He's jogging before long, and there are so many dead ends--were there this many before, or is he only getting himself more lost? Panic steals his breath, but when he stands still to listen for padding footsteps, menacing growls, all he can hear is the hollow wind and maybe, somewhere far distant, the clatter of pebbles, always coming from the direction he's just left.

Whatever it is, it's stalking him.

The realization robs him of all rational thought. It's too much: first the betrayal of his body and now this. He stuffs his compass in his pocket and takes off running, thinking only of _away._

Fifteen minutes later, he skids to a stop halfway down his first dead end. He _knows_ the beast is closer.

He curses and sprints back out, turning to continue down the corridor he'd abandoned because it was starting to look too overgrown. If he runs into another dead end, he's not sure he'll have time to retrace his steps before the beast is on him, but he doesn't remember any other main branches back the way he'd come, so he has no better options.

The corridor opens on a stone field, and it's a wonder he doesn't break both ankles fleeing across it. There are so many archways opening in so many different directions, but he takes the biggest and sturdiest, hoping its corridors will be the same.

They aren't.

With every dead end, his terror becomes harder and harder to think through. His lungs heave for air only to lose it in desperate sobs. He doesn't want to die, not like this, but he has nothing: no weapons, only useless blunt teeth and nails, his voice tamed and weakened, shaped by this _stupid_ body. The body he's going to die in, because it takes time to get back _out._

He can't do this, he--

***

\--curls up in a small place as everything goes black, which--

***

\--is--

***

\--comforting in that he won't see the end coming, but it hasn't happened yet, and he doesn't know why. He can't even guess at it in the dark, featureless pit he's made for himself inside his own mind. He's distantly aware that his body is still moving, but he doesn't know and almost doesn't care how long it can keep--

***

\-- _running._ He is running like he's never run before, arms and legs pumping so hard he feels the strain with every stride, grim purpose singing through him. When he tries to dart worried glances to the left and right, his eyes won't obey him, and his feet don't automatically veer to take the promising turn he spots up ahead. It's like he's a passenger, a passive observer to his body's antics, and he's afraid to tug the reins too hard because the beast is almost on them. He can hear its harsh breaths, smell the reek of its shaggy pelt, and as the last arch--the _last_ \--opens wide to spit them out at Franchia's border, he feels a single claw graze his back.

Seconds later his body stumbles at last, dropping him to his knees as he pants for breath. Only a few yards from the border, he's apparently safe; the beast doesn't leave the maze, and he doesn't turn back to look at it.

_A ball of twine would have come in handy,_ he thinks and doesn't know why. What would he have done with it? Thrown it over his shoulder to distract the beast like a kitten with a skein of yarn?

He climbs to his feet--he thinks it's his impulse that accomplishes this, at least--knees and palms stinging from where the ground tore them open, and staggers away from Franchia's border in the direction of the rising moon.

***

He remembers almost none of his walk to the next town over. There isn't a hostel, so he splurges on a hotel; he's spent almost none of his funds as it is. He pays for a week, covers both of the mirrors in his room, and sleeps the first three days solid--or thinks he does until he emerges on the fourth day and the hotel staff greets him by name.

"Cecil, good morning!"

"Sleep well?"

"Your usual breakfast, Cecil?"

They aren't afraid of him. Even in his...sleepwalking state, he's apparently likeable. He smiles--less and less carefully these days--and says not today; he wants to see more of the town. He doesn't think he could stomach food right now anyway.

He wanders aimlessly--he thinks aimlessly--past shopkeepers who wave and citizens who smile and nod as he passes. When he finds a little café he doesn't recognize--and he shouldn't recognize any of the town, because he _hasn't been here before_ \--he makes up his mind to duck inside fast before his feet can decide to turn that way without him.

The waitress looks at him strangely as he grips the edge of the table to hide the way his hands shake, but she doesn't ask. "Can I take your order, sir?"

He's so grateful that she doesn't know what he wants already, he tips her far more than he should. Not that she doesn't deserve it--the service is excellent--but she's been smiling at him the entire time, giving him friendly sidelong glances, clearly likes the look of him. She blushes a little as she stops him on the way to the door, serving tray tucked under one arm as she nervously tucks a stray lock of dark hair behind her ear.

"Are you in town long?" she asks shyly.

"Through the end of the week," he says, feeling awkward. He's not sure how to tell her he's flattered but not interested, and part of him thinks he _should_ know. He doesn't...doesn't want to...embarrass her. It _matters._

"Oh? Well...I'm Celeste, by the way," she says, holding out her hand at that strange angle that always leaves him wondering--wait, since _when?_ \--whether he should shake her hand or kiss the back of it.

"Cecil," he says without thinking, clasping her fingers in his own, and--

Cecil.

_Cecil._

Fuck, it can't be. He'd seen the boy's spark go _out_ \--

No. No, he'd only seen it go dim.

Is the little wretch still in here with him?

"Cecil? Sir? Are you all right?" Celeste asks, squeezing his hand more tightly.

"Fine," he says, freeing himself from her grip. "Just--tired from the trip. Excuse me. I should get back to the hotel."

She doesn't stop him, but he wouldn't have listened if she'd tried.

Cecil. No. It's not--

***

\--possible that he lost some time there, again, because he's back in his hotel room standing in front of the uncovered bathroom mirror, gripping the edge of the sink and leaning forward as if daring something to reach through the glass. Nothing will--it's years too late for that--but that he's standing here at all is... unnerving.

He retreats to the other room, settles himself cross-legged on the bed and closes his eyes to look inside himself, but his vision is no longer clear. It's fuzzy, like he's seeing the insubstantial planes through a hazy fog or a thick membrane, and in a way he _is._ He's become too grounded in the flesh, but when he tries to loosen his hold, he feels something pushing at his back. Something strange but not quite unfamiliar. Something that wants him _out._

He grips more tightly, claws his way down deep into the flesh he's claimed as his own, but that only makes things worse. Buried in meat, the planes of mind and spirit go opaque; he can't see where his rival hides or where the next attack will come from. He only knows he's not alone in his body, that something has been waiting patiently inside him for years before showing itself.

It shouldn't be possible. It's been decades since he's taken a form, true, maybe longer, but he's never had a contender for control before. Maybe it's because he found this one in Night Vale--and the longing for _home_ rises up in him so sharply he chokes on it, clawing at his throat, breathless, he _can't breathe_ \--

He comes back to himself at the bus station, about to request a ticket to the nearest town with an international airport, but he wrests control of their tongue long enough to buy a ticket for Luftknarp instead. If Night Vale did this to him, he'll be damned if he's going back. He may very well be damned anyway, but at least he has enough sense to stay away from the gates to his own personal hell. He's wrested bodies from stubborn spirits before. This is just more of the same. Now that he knows what he's up against, it should be easy.

When he realizes he's humming to himself, he makes himself swallow, hard, and chokes. His body never loses its tiny, private smile.

***

Eventually, a flickering smear of non-time and lost time later, he tries to get out. There are other bodies; he'll have other chances. Only when he tries to leave, he realizes he's anchored himself too deep. He struggles and thrashes, tries to rip apart every tie he's ever made to this horrid bag of flesh, but he can't even see the chains he forged, his inner eyes gone cataract-cloudy. He can still see _enough,_ but he can no longer see himself, or the other.

The other who is _forgetting_ him, the way he forgot the boy, the more his control slips. He's a haze of confusion to that other consciousness, a nightmare half-remembered and a reason to stay away from mirrors. Cecil remembers only that mirrors can be dangerous; he doesn't recall that what he carries inside himself makes him safe.

They live a strange half-life, and sometimes he forgets which one he is, which one of them is trapped and just who is the intruder. Sometimes there's no difference.

Sometimes when his name is called, he looks up and thinks, _Cecil, yes--that's me._

***

Station Management is waiting for him when he returns to Night Vale, and this time the note they slip under their door is more positive. _Much better,_ their spiky, half-illegible scrawl reads, and one part of him beams while another shudders at the trickle of ice that slithers down his spine. _Be ready to take your place on Monday. Night Vale has waited long enough._

The station hasn't had a regular DJ since Leonard, and they've been getting by on interns and prerecorded messages ever since. When he sits down in front of the microphone, it should be his moment of triumph; it's everything he's worked toward, everything he's waited and sacrificed for.

_Hello,_ he means to say, _hello, hello, hello, here I am, Night Vale, I made it past your borders and through all your defenses and **here I am** \--hello, Night Vale; you'll never be rid of me now._

But his smile is not his smile. He leans in, closes eyes that are not his eyes in a bliss he can feel but not share in, and though it's _his_ voice, _his_ power, the words he says were never, ever his.

"Home," Cecil purrs, "is where the heart is, so I advise you bury it deep. Welcome," he says with a giddy inner laugh only two people can hear, "to Night Vale."

**Author's Note:**

> This didn't end up being the fic I thought I was going to write, but the last section made too good of an ending to not, well, end it there. Uh. Sorry, Carlos? We all know you're an awesome boyfriend, hon, but I guess you don't get to prove it this time around. D:


End file.
